eBay woke up. What a concept! A real person answering your e-mails. Now, of course, the downside of this is that the e-mails will be answered in Bangalore and Mumbai, and will still be from controlled response scripts.

But still, it’s somewhat of a concession from eBay that they stumbled a bit…and that the response to the latest earning results may force them to re-think their end-to-end response.

Oh, and in case eBay missed it, the “Lincoln Fries” were auctioned at Yahoo! Auctions…And JupiterMedia is talking about alternatives to eBay. [here]

Re-invention is a wonderful thing. And the response from the community is likely to be…when will eBay begin encouraging its leaders and evangelists to take to the Blogosphere?

A Message from Bill Cobb

Since becoming the President of eBay North America in December, I’ve spent a lot of time listening to you, our Community. There’s a lot on your minds right now. I’ve been taking it all in and thinking hard about how we can make sure eBay remains a fun, safe place to trade, and a prosperous home for our many dedicated sellers.

One of the issues I’ve heard a lot about is our recent fee increases, particularly the increase in Store Inventory Format final value fees. I’ve also heard concerns about customer support, the amount of change we make to the site on a regular basis, and trust and safety. We’re listening to everything you have to say.

eBay has become a hugely successful marketplace as a result of the innovation, enthusiasm and hard work of our Community. The site has also become more complex as it has grown to meet many of your needs. So our challenge is to keep pace with the Community’s changing requirements, while preserving the things that make eBay so special. With that in mind, I’d like to give you a preview of some upcoming changes for the United States and Canada.

eBay has a fantastic Customer Support team, but Meg and I agree we haven’t invested enough in giving our CS reps the flexibility and tools they need to really take care of you. So, to start, within the next 90 days, we’ll shut down most of our automated email responses. Our users will get a “real” e-mail response to their questions - you’ll hear from a human being who will try to help you with your problem or question right off the bat. We will only use auto responses to acknowledge receipt of spam or policy violation reports.

We also think the time has come to expand phone support. Currently phone support is available only to Silver, Gold, Platinum and Titanium PowerSellers. Starting April 1, all eBay Stores owners also will have access to phone support. We’ll provide details on the benefits of phone support to Stores owners soon.

We know pricing is a critical issue for our sellers. While we stand behind our decision to increase final value fees on Store Inventory Format listings - because they make sense for items that list with insertion fees of two cents - I know this increase has been difficult for some of our sellers. To reward our eBay Stores sellers, we’ll be crediting $15.95 - a month’s Basic Stores subscription - in May to all sellers who operated an eBay Store for the month of April. Stores owners will receive more details on this soon.

We also want to do something for the rest of our sellers. I’m happy to announce that effective at midnight tonight, eBay.com and eBay.ca will reduce minimum insertion fees for Auction-Style listings, Fixed Price, Motors Non-Vehicle and B&I non-Capital Equipment Categories from 30 cents to 25 cents (CA$0.35 to CA$0.30). eBay Germany has always used this pricing, and users there have benefited from higher conversion rates on items with lower starting bids.

One of the great things about eBay is the candor and passion of our Community. Your input keeps this company focused on what’s right and important. Later this month, I’ll be hosting an online meeting to hear more from you. You’ll see more details on the Announcement Board soon. And I’ll periodically post notes like this one to talk about issues of importance to all of us.

eBay has never stopped listening to our users and we never will. I know many of you already have Meg’s e-mail address and frequently send her messages about things you care about. I hope you will do the same with me. My e-mail address is billcobb@ebay.com. I promise I’ll read every e-mail. And most of all, I’ll listen.

Sincerely,

Bill Cobb
President
eBay North America

Tags: API, app, blog, Canada, community, control, conversion, critical, current, EAD, Germany, HTML, HTTP, IE, IM, IP, Issues, it, media, North America, Om, One, online, pr, president, review, spam, United States, users, web, Yahoo!

See Here.

Congrats Russell. I miss the valley and the cool companies that are there. But I am also not willing to move back to a place which is so hideously expensive, where the public education system is awful (parents are asked to supply basic supllies such as pencils, toilet paper, etc. because Propostion 13 has destroyed the California Education system), and the business ecology tends to be very inward-looking.

However, if Yahoo! made me an offer…

Tags: book, business, cool, education, HTML, HTTP, IE, IM, Om, pr, Yahoo!

Yahoo has started a new free blogging service for the Japanese market. [here]

Unusual to see Japan as a test market, but you have to think that someone at Yahoo Corporate is playing with the new Yahoo Blog Tool that will be released in the US.

Any comments from Yahoo! Blogging Team?

Tags: blog, Blogging, corporate, HTML, HTTP, it, Japan, Om, One, Yahoo!

Interesting how the Firefox Buzz Index at Yahoo matches the hit graph on my server.

Gecko Hits

Firefox Hits

Go Firefox!

Tags: blog, Firefox, hits, HTML, HTTP, IM, it, media, Om, search, server, Yahoo!

So far, YDS seems to be ok. A bit of hacking to get it to look into PST files (this should be a default!). However, I am re-building the indices (not indexes, please!) because the file search was having issues finding the string "doc". But my Outlook e-mail was all searchable (except for the PST files).

I will write more as I use it more.

YDS has a Fatal Flaw in my opinion — it does NOT search inside PST files. I believe that Copernic did.

Also, the searching interface is not real intuitive, and I am a non-linear thinker.

Off to get Copernic.

Tags: desktop, HTTP, IE, Issues, it, Om, opinion, Outlook, search, Yahoo!

Go try it here.

Good luck!

Tags: desktop, HTTP, it, Om, search, Yahoo!

Read the bio of Dr. Usama Fayyad, the new former Chief Data Officer at Yahoo!.

I will stop whining about my work and try to do something productive instead. Thanks for the ego-crushing YSearchBlog.

Tags: blog, search, Usama Fayyad, Yahoo!

Link: Yahoo! News - Hockey Night in Canada theme composer launches lawsuit against CBC.

Chorus:
Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea;
Tracing one warm line through a land so wild and savage
And make a Northwest Passage to the sea.

Westward from the Davis Strait ’tis there ’twas said to lie
The sea route to the Orient for which so many died;
Seeking gold and glory, leaving weathered, broken bones
And a long-forgotten lonely cairn of stones.¹

Three centuries thereafter, I take passage overland
In the footsteps of brave Kelso, where his “sea of flowers” began
Watching cities rise before me, then behind me sink again
This tardiest explorer, driving hard across the plain.

And through the night, behind the wheel, the mileage clicking west
I think upon Mackenzie, David Thompson and the rest
Who cracked the mountain ramparts and did show a path for me
To race the roaring Fraser to the sea.

How then am I so different from the first men through this way?
Like them, I left a settled life, I threw it all away.
To seek a Northwest Passage at the call of many men
To find there but the road back home again.

¹ “Not until 1859 did the last search party, led by Leopold McClintock, find
the cairn containing messages confirming Franklin’s death, and skeletons of
some of the last survivors, some of whom had apparently resorted to
cannibalism. According to a note found in the cairn at Point Victory, “Sir
John Franklin died on 11th June 1847″ at a point when only 24 men had thus
far died.”
– The Franklin Expedition: 1845-1859

Tags: app, ARIN, ASP, blog, Canada, cbc, cro, HTML, HTTP, IE, IM, it, LAN, Mac, Om, One, PBS, PHP, pr, search, steps, web, Yahoo!

Link: Yahoo! News - Bush Chooses Rice to Replace Powell.

I can just picture her first meeting with a member of the reality-based community known as the Diplomatic Corps…

"No, really. George was joking…Madeline Albright is behind the curtain, right?"

Wonder how long it will take Washington, the United States, and the world to recover from this train wreck. The next four years are going to be hell.

I am sitting here, watching The Civil War, and seeing some eerie parallels. The anger is growing..I can feel it…

And Samantha swoons whenever she hears Shelby Foote speak.

Tags: community, HTTP, IE, IP, it, Om, pr, United States, Yahoo!

I gave up. Blogger is too slow, flaky and clunky. I would rather pay the folks at TypePad/Six Apart.

Once again, I walk away from the free Google service into a for-fee service: Yahoo! Mail Plus and TypePad.

What does everyone else think?

ADDENDUM: Just checked in with my one other contact who uses Blogger, and she stated that she is seeing the same level of spotty performance and reliability that I have been experiencing. Her interaction with the Blogger support team resulted in an admission that the back-end at Blogger was getting some more kit to try and remedy these issues.

Too late, was the cry.

Tags: blog, Google, IE, interaction, IP, Issues, it, Om, One, performance, Reliability, Yahoo!